Historical background

The UIA was founded on the 1st June 1907, in Brussels, Belgium, under the name Central Office of International Associations, by Henri La Fontaine, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1913, and Paul Otlet, Secretary-General of the then International Institute of Bibliography, which subsequently became the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID), and with which UIA activities were closely associated.

The Association was officially founded under patronage of the Belgian government on the 29th January 1908, and became a federation under its present name in 1910 at the 1st World Congress of International Organizations. It was registered as an international association with scientific aims under the Belgian law of the 25th October 1919.

In its early years, the UIA collaborated closely with the Institut international de la paix, in Monaco, which had produced the 1905, 1906 and 1907 editions of the Annuaire de la Vie internationale, which subsequently evolved into the Yearbook of International Organizations. In 1951 a special ECOSOC resolution established cooperation between the United Nations and the UIA for the preparation of the Yearbook of International Organizations.

Early work also contributed to the creation of the League of Nations and the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), the predecessor of UNESCO.

o  About the UIA
o  Aims and objectives
o  Governance and organization
o  Partners and external relations